


It's 3.05pm.

by Aeslehx



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:14:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5107580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeslehx/pseuds/Aeslehx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock sometimes drops in on the King's College London dissection class. He finds more than he bargained for there; namely, a medical student named John Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cadavers Are Dead People

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Progress of Sherlock Holmes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/173274) by [ivyblossom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/pseuds/ivyblossom). 



The dissection room smelled pungent; the mix of formaldehyde and methanol assaulted the noses of the medical students that milled around. Sherlock strode in just as the teaching assistant shut and locked the door, his laboratory coat swinging out behind him. The oppressiveness of the room seemed to grow, now that they were locked in with the dead. Sherlock resisted the urge to fidget in annoyance as the voices of the students echoed around the enclosed space. Eventually, the professor rapped the board with a marker, and the room fell silent.

What a waste of time. The professor was drudging on about how to hold the scalpels and forceps, things that Sherlock were already familiar with. He itched to unzip the large blue canvas bags that lay on the metal tables in careful, neat rows. It was just too bad that cadavers weren't easy to come by, these days. In the 1800s, anatomists would rob graves for the bodies, using the dead for dissections. It made sense, in Sherlock's mind. If it wasn't illegal, Sherlock himself would have dug up all the graves in the city by now. The menial labour of shoveling dirt was far preferable to voluntarily shutting himself in a room of 30 humans. The dead didn't need their bodies. Far better to have their rotting corpses contribute to the learning of others. Still, the criminalisation of 'body snatching' was one of Sherlock's favourite cases. 

Herman Webster Mudgett. Serial killer, con artist, and bigamist. Executed by hanging for the murder of an estimated 200 people. He had sold his victims to medical schools for profit, which eventually shed light on the black market of educational institutes paying grave robbers to dig up the dead bodies. It amused Sherlock slightly that Herman Webster Mudgett was more commonly known as H. H. Holmes. It seemed that they shared both an indifference to the popular sensibilities for the uses of corpses, and a last name.

Eventually, the professor stopped rambling, and the medical students began approaching the body bags. Some were hesitant, but each student found a table presently, leaving Sherlock standing alone in the middle of the dissection room. They had somehow divided themselves into groups of 4 per cadaver, an instruction Sherlock had missed because he had tuned out. He hated group activities. No one had ever wanted Sherlock in their group in primary school, and Sherlock didn't assume that it would change now. It was why he had chosen to undertake his secondary education independently. It wasn't as if Sherlock needed a teacher to learn. He stood there, undecided, until a boy with blue eyes and blond hair tugged his sleeve. "You can join us. A group of 5 won't matter."

Of course it wouldn't matter. Sherlock wasn't interested in partaking of whatever group work the anatomy tutors had planned out; he was here to examine the bodies at his own discretion. Ignoring the way one of the girls at their table was gingerly tugging open the zip, Sherlock grabbed the metal rings and swiftly unwrapped the cadaver. Female. Obese, BMI of approximately 28-29. Her head was missing, but Sherlock could tell by the build of her body that she had led a sedentary life in the last few decades of her life. Likely died of a myocardial infarction, from the way her heart was looking.

Sherlock left the other students to peer at the shoulder, and quickly whipped out a test tube filled with clear, colorless fluid. He had been working on an agent that would be able to identify the presence of blood, no matter how minute the quantity, how old the blood was, or if it had been contaminated with other substances. The coagulated blood of the cadaver would be perfect. He ignored the looks of shock of the other students as he deftly dabbed some blood with a Q-tip, and inserted it in the test tube. He held it up in front of his face, eyes concentrated on the clear liquid in the test tube. It fizzled slightly, and Sherlock frowned, unsatisfied. It would need a much greater reaction if it was to detect even smaller quantities of blood.

The blond boy who had approached Sherlock earlier was walking over to his side of the table, and Sherlock quickly capped his test tube, preparing to fend off his questions. Obviously, to an untrained person, it would seem as if Sherlock had obtained part of the cadaver for his own personal use, which would undoubtedly offend the sensibilities of most people in the room. It was too laborious to explain to this boy the important experiment Sherlock was conducting, and why he needed the blood, so Sherlock quickly invented an excuse to leave.

"Hi, I'm John. What's your name?"  
"I think I'll be going now, I really-" caught up in the momentum of the scenario he had expected, Sherlock took a moment to register the blond boy's words. "Oh."  
"John. John Watson." The boy repeated.  
William. Sherlock. Scott. Holmes. It would be strange to introduce himself with his last name. "I'm Sherlock." William and Scott were simply too commonplace.  
"That's a nice name," the boy named John commented. Sherlock felt a little disconcerted by the first conversation he'd had with someone unfamiliar in years.  
"Iraq, or Afghanistan?"  
"What?" the boy seemed startled.  
"You've recently been to Iraq, or Afghanistan."  
"Yes I was in Afghanistan...but how did you-"

The boy was interrupted by one of the teaching assistants, who had come over to their table to check on their progress. She was dismayed to find that not only had they not reflected the skin and fascia over the deltoid as they had been instructed to, one of the students had managed to stab the scalpel through the axillary artery. As she corrected the way one of the girls was holding the forceps, the teaching assistant quizzed the group about the axillary nerve they had just cut through. Unfortunately, none of the students seemed to know the branches of the artery off the top of their head.

John finally spoke up, making a few half-correct guesses. Appeased, the teaching assistant rattled off the parts he'd missed out on, and gave them very specific instructions on what they should be dissecting. Appearing defeated, the small group watched as one of the students unwillingly picked up the scalpel and forceps again.

"God, that was a mess, wasn't it? How will I ever remember the branches of the axillary artery, let alone the branches of its branches?" John said to the group at large.  
"She said the second branch had 4 of its own branches, didn't she?" one of the boys said.  
"Yeah, the thoraco-acromial artery, I think the second branch is called. These names aren't even English, I swear!" another girl despaired.

Sherlock contemplated briefly, and for the first time in years, offered conversation on his own accord.  
"Cadavers Are Dead People." Sherlock said, slightly too loudly.  
"What?" One of the girls was looking at Sherlock with furrowed brows. She was obviously contemplating his mental capacity.  
"Clavicular, Acromial, Deltoid, and Pectoral. Those are the branches of the thoraco-acromial artery. It was mnemonic I just made up." Sherlock said, a little defensively.

John laughed, a clear, ringing sound that made Sherlock look at him. His face was contorted in amusement, his blue eyes sparkling with delight.  
"That's genius! And how very appropriate to the situation we are in," John said, breathless with laughter.  
Sherlock felt that he would like to get to know the boy called John, who had been to Afghanistan recently, better. It was a feeling he hadn't had before.


	2. A Study in Pink

The clock made its laborious way to 4 p.m. sharp, and Sherlock quickly bottled more of the coagulated blood as the teaching assistants hustled the students out of the door. Sherlock planned to make his escape amidst the chaos of lab coats being removed and gloves being tossed, but found his way obstructed by the boy called John. He tried to step around, but was too late; the crowd of students was pushing into the adjacent lecture theatre, and it would have seemed too conspicuous if Sherlock left then. Unwillingly, Sherlock let himself follow the herd into the radiology class.

Sherlock's thin, white fingers drummed heavily against the foldable plastic table before him. The surface was powdery from the various things that had been carved into its surface. 'James + Lily', 'Anatomy sucks', 'Someone save me'. Sherlock imagined the generations of students that had dug into the plastic using their pens, making their mark. Ridiculous. Sherlock didn't understand the urges of people to deface things out of boredom. Then, John sat down next to Sherlock.

A sheet of notebook paper, hastily torn, made its subtle way onto Sherlock's desk. Its edges were ruffled from having been ripped unceremoniously, and on it scrawled in black ink was: "How did you know I went to Afghanistan?" Sherlock's mouth twitched slightly at the corners.

"Elementary, John. The first thing I noticed was your bag- dirty, scuffed at the bottom. Well used, been somewhere dry and dusty. Definitely not in London, you've only been back a month at most. Else the dust would have washed off by now. I saw the Red Cross pin on your bag as well, and the pen you were using had the Red Cross insignia. The pin was larger than the standard given out for fundraising. Everyone has those. Volunteer? No, too large, it must have been used for identification. The pin was dusty too- it was on the bag wherever you had been; it wasn't put on after you'd returned. Your hands were tanned, but only until the cuffs of your long sleeves. You were overseas, but not for recreation. A man overseas somewhere hot and dry for work, who carries a large Red Cross pin so he can be easily identified by others. Put that together with the fact you're a medical student and it's obvious- you were on a mission trip. There are only two places the Red Cross is sending volunteers right now, which leaves just one question- Iraq, or Afghanistan?"

Sherlock paused finally, catching his breath. John stared at him, his eyes slightly wide. It didn't occur to Sherlock that most human beings didn't rattle off their deductions at a speed that was hard to follow, in normal conversation. He assumed that the stunned look on John's face was solely due to admiration for Sherlock's inductive reasoning ability. It was lucky that the teaching assistant was one of those lax ones that didn't really care either way; he was flipping through the pictures of X-rays on the screen, oblivious to the chattering of the students. "Yep, that's a foot. That's a toe. That's like...the calcaneus. Probably."

"Wow...Sherlock, that's really..." Before John could finish trying to articulate himself, Sherlock cut in.

"Would you like to be my flatmate?"

"What...?"

"Obviously you're staying in the dorms right now, and you haven't gotten a good night's sleep since you've moved in. I've found a nice place to rent near King's, but the price is too much for me alone. If we shared, the cost would be much more reasonable. Well, the place is mostly nice."

"How do you know I haven't been able to sleep...nevermind." John tried again. "What do you mean the place is mostly nice?"

"The landlord is this batty old lady called Mrs Hudson. She obviously has issues with decoration, because she painted the entire study in pink. I don't know how she finds the strength to show the room to potential tenants, I was horrified when she let me in."

It was John's turn to find his mouth crooking at the corners in spite of himself. "Well, I'd love to see this study in pink."


End file.
